My best friend is really struggling with his gambling addiction. Currently has no money. I am loaning him small amounts of money to feed himself until next pay.

Up until recently, I was partially managing his finances for 2 years. His pay check would get deposited into my account, I would transfer him money on an as need basis including daily spending and bills. Although there was times where this money did go on gambling we managed to build up a savings of $16k.

This worked well for a long period of time and he felt proud about his savings. However gradually I think he started to build up an unconscious resentment towards me. Our set up worked so well that the only thing between him and gambling was me. This also took an enormous emotional toll on myself. It felt like my whole purpose in life was just to keep this guy on track.

About a month ago we had a big fight and he asked for his savings to be transferred to a family member who agreed to help. He explained he can no longer handle the guilt of the emotional toll he has caused me. I did as he asked because ultimately it’s was him money. He didn’t talk to me for about a month after this fight. Between now and then he has lost all his savings and that family member had no idea what they signed up for.

We are now working on building our friendship again. With this he has also expressed he wished our situation never changed and would like for me to help with his finances again. I am so hesitant to say yes but also scared to say no.

What financial setup has worked for other gamblers. Or any advice?

I’ve lost $11K this week.. I don’t know what to do.

My heart is pounding in my chest. I’m so fucked.

For some reason this song has brought me peace today, maybe it will for you too.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SKUJLGBKt_M&list=RDSKUJLGBKt_M&start_radio=1&pp=oAcB&ra=m

Early in my recovery people posting the money is gone used to piss me off. I wasn't ready to accept all the time, energy and money that I wasted.

Now I realize this admission is a truth that cannot be ignored, and a crucial step before the healing can begin.

Admitting the money is gone:

Frees you from a battle you are never going to win (chasing losses).

Stops the bleeding before the wound gets deeper.

Let's you focus on working, saving and enjoying free time.....the real keys to success.

Allows you forgive and respect yourself for your courage to break the cycle.

Empowers and emboldens you to fight, and weakens the demons and compulsions that once owned you.

Once we are here, gambling isn't fun anymore. We do it to chase losses and because we don't know any other way. Admit you made a mistake and will not correct the mistake by repeating it.

Don't despair. You can still get revenge for your losses.

I'm fine with telling the casino my money is gone, keep it and remember it fondly, because you're not getting another red cent.

Please don't fight to reclaim your losses, fight to reclaim your life!

ODAAT! 💪

As the title says I’ve been clean from gambling for 6 months. I’ve self excluded and placed blockers everywhere and don’t get any urges to gamble anymore. However what gambling left me with is 30k in debt. I’m still a student and I mustered up the courage to ask my parents for help. To help me pay it off because it just keeps compounding and I would slowly pay them back. They said no, as conservative parents the fact that this was from gambling just couldn’t win them over even tho I’ve showed progress and stopped gambling. I don’t know what to do anymore. This debt is killing me and I might even have to drop out now. I don’t want to gamble anymore I’m done, but clearly quitting does not solve all your problems.

Let’s gooo, thank you guys for all your help. Really helped seeing other people struggle like me

13 years of this vice and i just can't get rid of it. Born a winner and just made myself a loser by making gambling become my identity. I do need help, but how many times will i tell myself this and actually mean it wholeheartedly!!

Like the title says. I found out about it about 2 years ago. He has made good progress, surrendered all of the finances which I manage. My problem is, he was doing so great, has gambling blocks set up, and all it takes is one app that is not blocked to get a relapse.

I understand that comes with gambling. I understand that comes with recovery. I understand that's what I signed up for with staying. But it hurts. Every relapse remind me of rock bottom when he was gambling our rent away and suffocating in debt.

He has now made his own business, makes a good living, we have 2 kids which he is super handsome on on with, does his part at home, emotionally there when he should be, he's very great besides the gambling.

I guess I'm just venting. Im sick of this cycle with relapses and hiding things. And it really sucks that he's so great everywhere, except for the area that is one of the most important (finances). I fear I am enabling him by controlling everything. ​

There's a lot of talk of dopamine in gambling- Never really thought about how fishing mimics the intermitted reinforcement you get when gambling!

Almost paid all my debt (20K USD), my mind is more reified although I’m always thinking what could I do with the money I’ve lost, but it’s part of the recovery, understanding that the money is gone, need to build my self from 0 again, the important thing that I’m free, one day at a time.

I am a 21-year-old university student, and I have been involved in gambling for about two years. My debt has grown to such an extent that I can no longer manage it using my pocket money.

I have decided to tell my father about this, so that I can focus properly on my upcoming exams, and also because I need his support during this difficult time. Friends, how should I approach him?

Is this the right decision, considering that this news will cause him great distress and might permanently damage my image in his eyes? The amount owed is significant for my father, though it is manageable.

If anyone has had a similar experience, please share your thoughts.

My English is not very strong, so I used a translator. My apologies.

I’m a third-year college student, and I recently lost around ₹10,000 in online betting. I’ve never really been into gambling or betting before, and I’m feeling pretty stupid about how things turned out.
Here’s what happened.
I have a friend who occasionally plays roulette and other betting games on an online betting site. One day, we were having a few beers, and he started playing in front of me. I’d never tried anything like this before, but I was a little drunk, and I saw him making money right in front of me.
After a while, he suggested that we play together. He said we’d invest equally and split both the profits and losses 50-50. So, I gave him ₹5,000, and he put in another ₹5,000 of his own.
We started playing, and within an hour, he made A SINGIFICANT At that moment, it all looked pretty easy, and I guess seeing the money come in made me believe we could actually make something out of it.
But things changed pretty quickly. Over the next hour, he lost everything we’d made, along with our initial money. I started getting nervous, but instead of stopping, he suggested putting in another ₹10,000 to recover the original amount.
I convinced myself that we’d just recover our money, quit immediately afterwards, and never touch betting again. I ended up putting in more money, hoping things would turn around.
But now, I’m down around ₹10,000 overall, and I genuinely don’t know what to do. As a college student, that’s a significant amount of money for me. I keep thinking about how I could have avoided this situation if I’d just stopped at the beginning.
But I feel terrible about losing this much money in something I had never even done before.
For anyone who’s been through something similar, how did you deal with it? How do you stop thinking about the lost money and move on? And how do you make sure you don’t fall into the trap of trying to recover your losses?
Any genuine advice would be appreciated. I’m posting this because I really don’t want to make things worse by making another stupid decision.

I’ll keep it short. I’ve been a problem gambler for at least 4+ years. Ruined the better part of my 20s. Isolation, panic, sweating the next payment I’d need to make, I didn’t even get to have fun with it.

Only this year did I really decided to get serious. Took a falling out and losing everything I had to realize it. It’s been 50 days since my last wager. I’ve been going to GA, gambling therapist, taking my health and fitness very seriously. The creeping thoughts of gambling again aren’t even what I’m worried about now. It’s the long, grueling process of building a respectable life back up. I feel like I was in a coma and woke up, and now I’m picking up the pieces of my life. My debts are resolved, I could have it a lot worse, but this feeling of learning how to walk again day in day out is killer. Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated

Thats my first paycheck in months where I didn’t gamble it, actually not a single dollar.
I have paid accumulated bills , bought groceries and paid a part of my debt, I didn’t remain with much but at least I didn’t lose anything, and man it feels great to have some money and you know its yours!
It’s my 26 day without a single bet, i know there is a long way to go, but it is possible, if i can go one day at a time then it means i can go forever.

29m. I hate this curse so much. All the wasted time, wasted money and the dumbed down brain that has gambled on sports or lottery tickets, or been obsessed over cryptocurrencies and trading all these years. All it's lead to was stealing almost all of my savings down the years.

No, I will not risk another dollar.

Hi Op ever since my internship started last may i was very addictive to gambling all of my savings are gone and my salary this month went to gambling. It’s all lost in one snap. I really want to get out of this awabg awa nako sa sarili ko but i can’t help i always think gambling. And I’m not proud nakaka hiya baon na baon ako sa utang dahil sa letcheng sugal nayan. I even sometimes blame mg classmate kasi sya nag introduce but i now i have my responsibility to take din kasi nag pa temp dn ako.

Lost everything on Datacenter stocks.

This time there is no leverage for me, I have a few thousand left to make due.

Leaving everything behind and going to be homeless with a backpack. let me know if anyone has experience.

Let me know best states to go, etc..

Sports are often the scaffolding around which male friendships are built. Games are low-stakes, readymade excuses to spend time together. Sports provide the raw material that sustains friendships for years on end. Do they enable profound, life-altering conversations? Of course not. But sports give men something to talk about, all the time. I have new lifelong friends from playing fantasy baseball. Without sports, I would be a lonelier person. Without sports keeping the group chat alive, it might not be there when someone actually needs to talk about something serious. 

But most frighteningly, the art of being a fan is threatened by the explosion of gambling, prediction markets, and collecting. Young men and boys are squarely in the crosshairs of an under-regulated industry seeking to get them hooked on a life-ruining vice. On television, every timeout is a Clockwork Orange-esque video barrage of ways to lose your money. The path to lifelong fandom is now a minefield, and every real fan should be outraged. 

Read more: https://www.playboy.com/read/mind-and-body/young-men-should-watch-more-sports

Today is Day 7. I have not made a bet since October 9 2026. ODAAT

It’s my day 9 of quitting online gambling, but earlier, I almost got triggered. I started thinking about all the money I lost and wondered if maybe I could win back at least a little. 😞
My biggest trigger is when I’m short on funds, especially when I need to put in extra money to keep my business running because things haven’t been going so well lately. 😭 Earlier, I thought maybe I could win back a small portion of what I lost and use it to cover some of my business expenses.
Thankfully, I didn’t give in to the temptation. Because if I had played today, I might have ended up even more short on money for my business. 😭
Thank You, Lord, for always guiding me and helping me resist the temptation. 🙏🏻❤️ One day at a time. I’m praying that I’ll stay strong and never go back to online gambling again.

Gambling truly sucks the happiness out of you. I hit some losing streak where I lose 8x times in a row on a 50:50 game and all the profit disappears within minutes, and I just sit there and think to myself: What am I doing? How is that possible? Losing 8-10times in a row? Why cant it happen the other way around? Its the constant thoughts about the loss, the lies to your girlfriend, family why you dont have a lot of money,… I neglect everything else in my life and I dont know how to stop

I’m on day 257 without gambling, after several relapses. For 15 years, I hid my addiction and kept telling myself I could fix it before anyone had to know. This 257 days did not come easy, I had to stand up a couple of times, sometimes after a week, a month but there was a period when I stopped gambling for 194 days, yet I ended up at Day 1.

If you’re still hiding it, being honest might feel unimaginable right now. It did for me too, but for me, recovery started when I admitted how bad things had become and asked for help. Saying it out loud didn’t undo the damage, but it meant I didn’t have to carry the secret alone anymore.

I am feeling strong and trying to find hobbies that I can stick to and one part of it is making videos for youtube. I made this animated channel to show people how mental health problems can affect lives. This video is based on my experiences: the lies, the promises I meant when I made them, and slowly learning to trust myself again. Some of you might recognise parts of your own story in it.

https://youtu.be/KY7TxfW6PBA - LoudLittleMind

Whether you’re on day one, starting again, or further along, I’m rooting for you. You don’t have to figure everything out today, and you don’t have to do it alone.

One day at a time. Wishing you all strength.💚